Here we go again

Will the NBA lockout have an economic impact?

Benny the Bull spills popcorn on fans at Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals of the NBA playoffs in May at the United Center. (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune)

With the continuing NBA lockout — now in its fifth month —some cities and citizens are starting to fret about the impact of this work stoppage on their local economies. Not to worry. There may be some cash-flow problems for the short guys with limos and the tall guys with tattoos, and some emotional costs to die-hard fans who otherwise have no lives and sports reporters who find they now have even more time on their hands, but the economic impact on a city with an NBA franchise is approximately zero.

The same was true for the NFL lockout earlier this year that ended in time for the regular season to kick off (and, in Devin Hester's case, to run it back.) And for the NBA lockout in 1998-1999 that trimmed more than a third of the games from the schedule.

Economic impact studies run the gamut, from sporting events — the Super Bowl, marathon races, all-star games — to the nonsporting world as well — national political conventions, a new casino or luring Hollywood to your city to film a movie. Their uniform findings suggest strongly that in multibillion-dollar local economies, the net economic impact is minute, or even negative (because of the subsidies that were paid and the sums of money that leak out almost immediately).

In most of these cases, there is simply a rearrangement or realignment of local spending. Will economic activity be reduced in and around an NBA arena if there is no season or only a partial one? Of course, even that is lessened once one can re-book the United Center with Jay-Z instead of D-Rose. But activity "lost" to one area of a city will very likely be compensated for with larger crowds and higher revenues at bars, malls, restaurants and movies in other parts of town. NBA fans are overwhelmingly local, so some businesses gain, others lose, and overall it's a financial wash.

In the same vein, the economic impact of the typical White Sox game is trivial. It is a tad larger for the Cubs, who are likely to draw a higher proportion of the crowd from outside the local area, plus, even with the new taxpayer-funded restaurant at the "Cell," it's a lot easier to spend money in Wrigleyville than Bridgeport.

The Chicago Marathon has a much bigger economic impact on the city than would the Chicago Bears on any given Sunday. Virtually all of the 61,000 fannies in Soldier Field are from Chicagoland, whereas probably 25,000 marathoners are not from the immediate area, and thus they spend some money here that would not ordinarily have accrued to us. The same is not true in the NFL: Games determine where people drink beer, gorge on brats and buy sweatshirts, not the total quantity of alcohol, calories or clothing purchased.

(The economic impact of the Chicago Marathon is sizable, though off by a decimal place from the $171 million estimate that the Bank of America-commissioned report alleged. And, of course, the granddaddy of all whoppers — the purported $22 billion gain to Chicago had we been selected to host the 2016 Summer Olympics — will stand the test of time as the most egregious example in this you-get-what-you-paid-them-to-find genre.)

Perhaps the more intriguing, and far more critical, analysis of this kind will have to do with the impact of the upcoming G8 and NATO summits in Chicago in May. Vast amounts will have to be spent to ensure security for world leaders and quell potentially violent protests that will make the October and November Occupy demonstrations seem like batting practice for city leaders and the police. And unlike for many of the other activities noted above, tourists will not be bringing boatloads of cash to dump on Fortress Chicago just to catch a glimpse of Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy or mayhem. One should also remember that in terms of such a risk-laden event, zero is not the lower economic bound.